


Saturday Is Calling Me

by feverbeats



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-29
Updated: 2010-08-29
Packaged: 2017-10-11 08:11:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,713
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/110268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/feverbeats/pseuds/feverbeats
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They meet for the first time on a bus.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Saturday Is Calling Me

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "You're My Disco" by Waldorf. Some of the third section stolen from RP with cause_to_effect, who was also an excellent beta. Less than two weeks ago I was all, "Yeah, I don't really ship Arthur/Eames," guys? Why I make any declarations about fandom is beyond me. It always ends in, well, this. (I also seem to recall saying I wish I could be more into Arthur/Eames. Clearly what I meant was COULD YOU PLEASE PUNCH ME IN THE HEART?)

i.

They meet for the first time on a bus.

They meet for the first time on a bus rolling through the city, on the kind of day that's full of clouds pressing down too heavy and close in the sky. Arthur remembers how he got here, but not why. He's on the way to a job. Or on the way home. Or to Cobb. There's no difference, really.

He shifts in his seat to look up at the almost impossibly tall building just outside. It stretches away but never touches the fat, low clouds. He pulls the little half table with its cup-holder into place in front of him, takes out his totem, and rolls it carefully across the surface. Six. Again. Six.

Again. Six. He's fine.

The surfaces of the buildings reflect, glass and steel, like something of Cobb's. Arthur sometimes wonders if the inside of his own mind looks like this at its very basic level, and if that's why he and Cobb have always gotten along. There doesn't seem to be any other reason.

The man in the seat across from him, hideous checked shirt fading from mauve to orange-brown, stands abruptly and then flings himself down in the seat next to Arthur. "Hullo. This seat taken?"

Arthur arches one eyebrow. "You had a seat to yourself over there." His voice is firm, but not rude. Totally neutral in every way. He aims to blend into any background, whereas this man seems to be doing the exact opposite.

The man doesn't move, though. "Eames," he says, offering a hand.

Arthur takes it, but only out of politeness. "Arthur."

Eames tilts his seat back, jerking the controls roughly until he's practically reclining. The woman in the seat behind him makes a sound of annoyance. "I hear," Eames says, "that you need a forger, Mr. Arthur."

Much more shocking than the fact that Eames knows they've been looking for a forger is the gut-punch of _Mr._ No one knows it's his last name, _no one_, not even Cobb. The dual shock jolts him so hard he can't answer for a second. Then he recovers, or at least makes it look like he has. "I'm afraid forgery is a subtle art, Mr. Eames. We can't use someone so flashy."

Eames looks a little impressed and a little put out, and Arthur doesn't trust either expression. "You clearly don't know the first thing about forgery, love."

They're out of the city center now—which city doesn't matter: Boston, New York, Chicago—and speeding through a slum, all buildings tilted at improbable angles, barely upright, while a defensive ridge of trees juts up along the edge of the highway.

"Are we awake?" Arthur asks sharply, aware that he's already rolled his die. Three sixes in a row isn't impossible, though, even on die that's only loaded in the real world.

Eames laughs unpleasantly. "If we're asleep, is this your mind, or mine?"

Arthur thinks about chrome and glass. Thinks about the flat brown grass by the edge of the road. "We're awake," he decides.

Eames grins. "So. Need a forger?"

ii.

They meet for the first time in a casino, a shoddy little place furnished with tacky red faux-Chinese lanterns and couches with ragged spots along the arms. Eames is down to ten American dollars when really gorgeous man walks in and joins the table. So of course Eames borrows money to buy back in.

The young man turns out to be named Arthur, no last name provided. He also turns out to be just a little better at poker than Eames is.

Unfortunately, most of the people at the table are significantly better than both of them, and soon they've both lost quite enough games, Arthur bowing out with grace and a pocket still full of rolled bills, Eames with empty pocks and not even enough change for the fare home.

"Buy me a drink and let's go again," he demands.

Arthur arches one perfect eyebrow. "I'd be glad to buy you a drink, but I believe we've both lost enough money for the evening, Mr. Eames."

Eames laughs, rough and easy as if he's drunk already, wondering if Arthur believes even a bit of the persona he's putting on. "Come on. Not for stakes, then."

Arthur's face doesn't change. Oh, Eames would _love_ to learn how to forge a man like Arthur. It'd take years, but it'd be worth it. "All right," Arthur says finally.

They drink together—gin and tonic for Arthur, scotch for Eames, neither drinking what they would have preferred, Eames guesses—and play together until well after most of the other patrons have gone home or to expensive hotels. The corner table is tucked out of the way of the noisy, happy roar of the casino, for which Eames is very grateful. Arthur looks lovely in low light, and Eames knows he'll get a better impression of the man if they can both focus.

He's so busy studying Arthur that he forgets to focus on his game, and then he's so busy trying to recover that he ends up just getting drunk. Finally, he's far gone enough that it's not even fun to try anymore, and besides, Arthur's better than he is. Even his poker face is better, which seems unfair. (Eames has always thought a forger should be good at poker. Pity it's more strategy than lying.)

Arthur ends up telling Eames about how he turned a young architect to a life of crime, making the man the best partner he's ever had. "Well," Arthur amends, clearly close to drunk now, "The only one who's lasted, mostly."

Eames ends up telling Arthur a lot of elaborate lies about himself, not bothering to make them sound convincing.

They're both slumped in their chairs now, and Arthur shoots Eames a low-watt smile. "Poker isn't my game, I'm afraid."

"No?"

"No. I'm better at craps. Anything with dice." The smile is now entirely for himself.

If there's one thing Eames can't resist, it's a mystery. "You're a hard man to read, Arthur. What business are you in?" Got to be business, with that suit, unless he's some sort of New York art person. Not likely, though. Not from the other bits and pieces Eames has picked up. Besides, Arthur's admitted to being involved in crime, and he doesn't look the petty sort.

There go those eyebrow again. "Dreams," Arthur says, his voice barely slurred.

The pieces that should have slid into place do so, with a click. "So when you said architect . . . ah."

Arthur nods. "And you?"

Eames slides his one remaining poker chip, the one he won't let Arthur touch, out of his pocket and onto the table. "It's a secret. Play you for it."

iii.

They meet for the first time in a casino, an upscale place with a lagoon theme. They need a forger for a job and Cobb heard from one of his contacts that Mr. Eames is the man to talk to.

Arthur is disgusted to find the man drunk out of his mind on cheap beer, standing on one of the poker tables and shouting.

He's only marginally less disgusted when they get Eames in a back room and he shrugs off his beer-stained jacket and grins at them, focused and bright. "Sorry about that. I was running a con. What can I do for you three?"

"You're not even drunk," Arthur says, a little scandalized.

"I don't drink, precious. Now. You have a job for me?"

Mal, brimming with excitement beside Cobb, explains. Afterwards, she adds, "But of course we'll have to test you first."

Eames smiles like a maniac. "Ready and waiting, _chéri_."

They dream themselves into a ballroom, Cobb's design. It's Eames's job to forge someone in the dream and hope they can't pick out which one's him before the time runs out and the music starts.

"This won't be too hard," Arthur says, looking around. "That man would stand out anywhere. I don't think he's going to work."

"I like him," Mal says firmly. "Don't you, Dom?"

Cobb nods, of course. "I've heard good things."

Disgusted again, Arthur gets to work. He moves around the room, talking to people who watch him with bright eyes and don't give anything away. When he turns back to Cobb and Mal, they're dancing. He frowns. "Cobb. The mission."

"We're blending in," Mal says, tossing him a little wink.

Cobb blushes furiously and nearly treads on her foot. "But Arthur's right. Come on, we'll check that group by the staircase."

"Wait," Arthur says.

They pause in their dance, Mal practically smirking and Cobb looking utterly thrown. And why not? He's been head-over-heels since he met her.

"I think it's her," Arthur says.

Cobb frowns. "What?"

"I mean I think he's forging her! Of course." Arthur feels unduly nettled. Maybe it's because Cobb's dancing with Mal. Maybe it's how obvious Eames is. This is a waste of their time.

Cobb is shaking his head, though. "What? He's definitely not. That's her."

"What are you talking about, Arthur?" Mal says. Her voice is all wrong.

"No, it's not," Arthur snaps. "Listen to her voice. Mal wouldn't ask you to dance in the middle of a mission. Or wink at me."

Cobb is now looking utterly crushed. "You don't think she'd ask. . ."

When Arthur looks back at Mal, he finds himself looking at Eames, instead. Eames grins and says, "Give them what they want, not what you expect, darling. It works better every time."

"Not every time. Nice try." There's nothing Arthur hates more than a disappointment.

"Mm," Eames says, shrugging. "I wasn't trying to fool you. I was trying to fool him. It'll take more tricks than that to get you, I'm sure."

Cobb sighs. "Well, it worked on me."

"You're an idiot," Arthur says with unnecessary venom. "Let's get out of here. He's not good enough. Let's find someone else."

"He's good enough," Cobb retorts. "Arthur, I know Mal. I know her really well. He was _perfect_."

Arthur checks his watch. They still have a few minutes left in the dream. "Cobb, come on. He's a buffoon. And not a very good actor. Just because you're easy . . ."

"No, okay, you're right." Cobb backs off, lifting his hands in surrender. "I feel stupid. We'll find someone else."

Arthur turns to Eames and extends a hand formally. "Well, it was nice to meet you, Mr. Eames."

Eames shrugs and shakes his hand. "Likewise. Lovely almost doing business with you."

Then Cobb starts to laugh.

Arthur feels a frown crease his brow. "What?"

He blinks, and Cobb is Eames, the other Eames shuddering and dissolving into nothingness.

Arthur blinks in disbelief. "I . . . how did you do that?"

Eames, still dressed in Cobb's jacket, stumbles a little. "Incredible mental effort, darling. Don't expect it to happen again. Fucking hell. I want to wake up and sleep for a thousand years." He waves toward where the other Eames stood a moment ago. "Just a projection. But I could control it, a bit. Just enough. Shoddy, though. Won't hold up in a real job."

"You are good," Arthur says, now completely furious and with no one to direct the fury at.

Eames grins at him, loose and easy. "I am good. I suppose Cobb and Mal are elsewhere in the dream. But they're not the ones I needed to impress, are they?"

"No," Arthur says, wishing the time would run out. "They're easy."

Eames snorts. "Almost makes me feel cheap. So. Am I in?"

Arthur shrugs helplessly, a feeling he's not used to. "Yes. You're in. I couldn't exactly turn you down."

"Wonderful." Eames is practically beaming.

Arthur sighs. "There's the music. Time to wake up."

iv.

They meet for the first time on a job. Eames is working with an architect named Harmony Li who does extraction, and the job's complicated enough that they need another forger. Someone mentions Arthur something—Eames will never remember: James, maybe?—and they're flying out to Colorado to meet him.

Eames is immediately impressed. There are different methods of forgery, and Eames could talk your ear off about any one of them, but he and Arthur are polar opposites. Eames forges by exaggeration, taking everything that makes a person stand out and shoving the details into the mark's mind, bright and loud and a little caricatured. The marks see what they want to see, rather than what they expect, which works just as well.

In contrast, Arthur is the most subtle forger Eames has ever met. He doesn't impose any of _himself_ on a forgery, and that's why he's so good. He doesn't need to exaggerate the person he's being if their image isn't fighting with anything of himself. Eames always has to throw himself into a role, being the person, feeling something of what they might feel, but Arthur just disappears into character.

Eames has never been so charmed in his life. "This one," he tells Li, "we're keeping around."

She gives him a look. "If he'll stay."

Eames can tell she's not happy about the idea. She likes small teams, but he doesn't care. He's enamored of the young man in the nice vests that blend right into a background when they need to, and if that means cutting Li loose, well. He's cut better architects loose over less.

The first mission goes smoothly, because of course Arthur's good, at least as good as Eames. The mark's mind is delicate, balking at any hint of strangeness, and that's why using two forgers is a better plan than a man in a suit walking in there and making small talk. While Li looks for his secrets, Eames and Arthur chat him up.

Forgery with flirting is always the easiest, because the mark is more likely to believe anything if you're attractive enough. They catch him in a club, Eames as a blonde in what's practically a slip and Arthur as a tall, slightly Asian-looking lady in an evening gown. Eames thinks at first that it's too much, that it'll attract attention, but it doesn't. The dress blends in with the wallpaper, dark and inconspicuous. Eames would be annoyed, if he weren't so impressed.

Arthur's voice, only about an octave higher than it is in the real world, slides down Eames's spine as they flirt with the mark. He hates it. This is going to utterly destroy him on any mission he takes with Arthur.

The mission, Eames is proud to say, goes off without a hitch, although Li does most of the work. Afterwards, Eames gives her a small, impressed nod and says, "It's been nice working with you."

To her credit, she doesn't even look surprised. "Have a nice life, Eames."

Arthur, when Eames finds him, is standing in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette and smiling a tiny smile and Eames is _done for_. He's always fallen fast, but this has to be a new record. It'll only get worse, too.

So he says, "I'm in the market for a new partner."

v.

They meet for the first time when Arthur and Cobb are hired to extract from Eames.

"I warn you," Delano, the man who's hired them, says, "He's good. He's got defenses like you wouldn't believe."

"Sounds impressive," Arthur says, bored already. He's already thinking about what sort of guns to dream up.

"No," Delano says, "_Really_. You're used to subconscious security teams, right?"

Arthur is about to say something impatient, but Cobb hushes him with a hand on his shoulder. Arthur stills, waiting.

"Well," Delano continues, looking oddly proud about it, "This man's got nothing of the sort. What he _does_ have is even better. Not for us, naturally, but from an objective standpoint," he adds quickly, catching sight of Cobb and Arthur's expressions. "He's trained himself to put up all kinds of illusions in his head. Getting anything out of him might be tricky."

"So, what's he got to hide that's he's built up his defenses for?" Cobb asks, seemingly unconcerned with the details of the man's mind. That'll be Arthur's job.

Delano hesitates. "Well . . . He's a businessman of sorts. Nothing reputable, of course. He's very rich, though."

Arthur nods. He had Delano figured out in the first five minutes, anyhow, but this just confirms it. Some sort of underground criminal trying to take out a big rival. Standard, but no more pleasant for it. At least the mark's tricks will make this job more exciting.

Arthur studies Eames for weeks, watching his house, asking about him, and even placing a bug in his phone. The only real information he manages to acquire is that Eames has very poor taste in clothing and an obscenely gorgeous mouth. It's frustrating.

So they end up going in practically cold. Eames's mind is very resistant of the lounge Cobb tries to overlay on it, and the building keeps turning up rooms Cobb didn't design and Arthur didn't dream.

"This is impossible to work with," Cobb snaps. "The safe isn't _there_. I know right where I put it, but it isn't there. I don't know what to do."

Arthur nods agreement. They're fucked, and he's half sure by this point that Delano planned it. There'll be time for paranoia later, though. "We just need to focus."

Cobb nods and goes to check the next room over.

Arthur, more frustrated than ever, tries the other direction and comes up against a dead end, the wall red and blank like nothing that should be in this building. He spins around, only to find the wall solid there, too. He's trapped. This man's mind is closing in on him, however improbably. There was no way they could have prepared for this.

After a suffocating second in which he's sure the walls are going to close in even further and crush him to death, he feels a breeze on his back, and he turns to find an open door leading outside, into a parking lot. He doesn't really have a choice. He goes out.

In the parking lot, Eames is standing, hands in his pockets. He's whistling.

"Got you," he says, smiling a brilliant smile.

Arthur swears under his breath, but not with much feeling. Someone like him won't be satisfied being a crime lord for long, and they could use him.

vi.

They have never met. Not in reality.

There's a dream Eames keeps having, a young man with dark hair, slicked with the same kind of gel Eames uses, but with a wardrobe more expensive than anything Eames would bother dropping money on. He's not a projection of anyone Eames knows, and Eames can't identify him as anything particular that's been rattling around in his subconscious. The again, if he could figure that out, he probably wouldn't be dreaming the man.

His name is Arthur, it turns out. Eames can never get a last name out of him, not on any of the street corners, not in any of the bars, not under any of the windswept cliffs of his dreams. As far as Eames can tell, Arthur just hangs around in his head to taunt him.

And taunt him Arthur does. He's impossibly good at damn never everything, from picking locks to hitting targets to ballroom dancing. He's also just the sort of enigma Eames is always drawn to in real life, although he's always been able to solve these human riddles before.

Maybe his mind is just bored and offering up something to stump him. Doesn't matter. He can't keep secrets from himself for that long.

Arthur mostly stays out of the way on jobs, except sometimes when Eames needs a hand. This means Eames is inclined to think of him as benevolent, except that Arthur's such a bastard.

"Your tie's off-center," he says one day, when Eames is forging a gorgeous brunette who isn't even wearing a tie. In the real world, though, Eames can nearly feel the pinch of the lime-green monstrosity he's picked out.

"Thanks," he says in the brunette's lilting voice. He wonders what part of his subconscious knows or cares about how to wear a tie.

Arthur starts showing up more and more frequently as Eames takes more jobs, and Eames wonders if Arthur is his own particular brand of madness. Everyone's got one, eventually, in this business.

Once, Eames gets badly hurt on a job and is lying on the floor, waiting to bleed out. Arthur is standing in the corner of the expensively-furnished room, watching him. "I could kill you," he offers.

Eames frowns. "I'd appreciate it. But what makes you think you can? You're my projection, and I've never been very good at that. You know, up close and personal. Besides, my self-preservation instinct's pretty strong."

Arthur gives him a sharp smile. "Well, I used to be an assassin."

Eames contemplates how ridiculous this is for a moment before he passes out.

The worst part it, Arthur's presence in his dreams doesn't seem to be building toward anything. He shows up a lot, but then he'll disappear for months on end. Every time, he touches Eames lightly on the sleeve, the back of the neck, the throat. It's maddening and intoxicating. And always, if Eames tries to touch him back, he disappears.

Even in his dreams, Eames can't get fucked.

So he leaves things be, hoping that whatever mad information his mind is trying to feed him, he'll figure it out eventually. Arthur's a help, after all, and he's nice to have around. He brightens up the place.

Eames never tells anyone else about Arthur. He doesn't want to sound crazy. He just lets Arthur stick around, doing small, helpful things and small, unhelpful things and never getting close enough for more than that.

Once, when Eames is breaking into the mind of another extractor and Arthur is following him around commenting on the décor, Eames asks him, "Why is it always you? Honestly, if my mind's got something to tell me, you'd think it would have tried something else by now. You're not even anyone I know."

Arthur gives him an unreadable smile. "But you don't mind, do you? You like that I'm always here, no matter what."

Eames supposes he does.


End file.
